This Week in Tech (Audio)

TWiT 1078: The Great British Marmalade Scandal - Building Your Own Router

This week's episode confronts the mounting legal battles over addictive social apps, questioning whether court rulings should reshape Instagram and YouTube's design. Explore the heated clash between user autonomy, scientific uncertainty, and the next wave of regulation. NASA: Artemis II Artemis II Live Tracker – Real-Time Orion Spacecraft Position, Speed & Trajectory NASA did eventually solve Artemis II's Outlook glitch How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'? I mapped every one Phone-free bars and restaurants on the rise across the U.S. Claude Code's Source Didn't Leak. It Was Already Public for Years. | AfterPack Blog Anthropic essentially bans OpenClaw from Claude by making subscribers pay extra OpenAI acquires popular tech talk show for 'low hundreds of millions' The latest Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are more customizable and expensive After 16 Years and $8 Billion, the Military's New GPS Software Still Doesn't Work - Slashdot Why the Pentagon loves Xbox controllers for laser weapons Iranian missile blitz takes down AWS data centers in Bahrain and Dubai — Amazon reportedly declares "hard down" status for multiple zones Iran's hackers go to war Breaking down the government's bizarre router ban How to turn anything into a router You Can't Defeat the Robots!': Baseball's AI Strike Zone Is Must-Watch Television Tech Companies Are Trying To Neuter Colorado's Landmark Right-to-Repair Law - Slashdot Delta to Tap Amazon Satellite-Internet Service for In-Flight Wi-Fi The IBM scientist who rewrote the rules of information just won computing's highest prize Chromebook Remorse: Tech Backlash at Schools Extends Beyond Phones ZomboCom was stolen by hacker, put up for sale, and has now been... Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Patrick Beja, Abrar Al-Heeti, and Iain Thomson Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and vide

TWiT 1077: I Would Download a Car - New Jury Ruling Could Reshape Social Media Liability

Big Tech just faced a courtroom reckoning, with Meta and Google found liable for platform "addictiveness" in a social media trial that could unleash a tidal wave of lawsuits. Find out why attorneys, entrepreneurs, and everyday users are suddenly on edge. • Social media addiction lawsuits hit Meta, Google, YouTube • Section 230 and First Amendment implications debated after court verdicts • Supreme Court sides with Cox; ISPs not liable for user piracy • Elon Musk's lawsuit over X (Twitter) ad boycotts thrown out • Anthropic versus Department of Defense: AI contracting dispute and retaliation claims • FCC's confusing foreign-made router ban and consumer tech fallout • Major supply chain attack: LiteLLM malware infects AI devs • The rise (and risks) of AI agents with voice, identity, and personification • Turing Award honors pioneers of quantum cryptography • Antimatter on the move: CERN's oddball truck experiment • Sci-fi and reality blur as Neal Stephenson walks away from the metaverse • Privacy and consent worries escalate with AI-powered recordings and surveillance • Digital shelf pricing arrives at Walmart and Kroger • Flipper Zero: voice-controlled hacking gadget gets an AI upgrade • Age verification laws create headaches for OS and app developers • Official White House app called out for surveillance and security blunders • Is AI progress barreling toward a dystopian tech future? Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Harper Reed, Brian McCullough, and Cathy Gellis Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: doppel.com outsystems.com/twit zscaler.com/security meter.com/twit ZipRecruiter.com/twit

TWiT 1076: I'm Monitoring the Situation - Meta's Horizon Worlds Stays Alive Against The Odds

Elon Musk faces a multi-billion dollar verdict after a California jury finds his tweets misled Twitter shareholders, raising the stakes for tech CEOs with unchecked social media influence. Plus, CBS kills its legendary radio news service while podcasting explodes, signaling a dramatic shift in how America consumes, trusts, and pays for news. CBS News Shutters Radio Service After Nearly a Century A US appeals court puts on hold an earlier ruling that had blocked Perplexity from using its agentic shopping tool to shop on Amazon's marketplace FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms The 49MB Web Page Microsoft unveils MAJOR improvements coming to Windows 11 this year — movable Taskbar, reduced RAM usage, less AI and ads, and much more CONFIRMED: "We are evolving how Windows is built behind the scenes to raise the quality bar" Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access in June Meta changes course on Horizon Worlds VR shut-down Gamers react with overwhelming disgust to DLSS 5's generative AI glow-ups Jury agrees that Musk's tweets during Twitter takeover misled investors After three months, Samsung is ending sales of the $2,899 Galaxy Z TriFold 200,000 Devices Erased? Pro-Iran Hackers Hit US Firm With Data-Wiping Attack Japan to allow 'proactive cyber-defense' from October 1st Sears Exposed AI Chatbot Phone Calls and Text Chats to Anyone on the Web Arizona AG files criminal charges against Kalshi over 'illegal gambling' Major League Baseball Steps Into the Prediction Markets, Strikes Deal With Polymarket Polymarket is opening a bar where you can drink and watch the world unravel in real time It's been 20 years since the first tweet Project Hail Mary is movie medicine The futurist who helped define tech trend reports just killed them (literally) This new cassette player has USB-C and Bluetooth, in case you want to ditch Spotify Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Janko Roettgers, Dan Patterson, and Lisa Schmeiser Download or subsc

TWiT 1075: The Commonwealth Club - Meta Layoffs, DOGE Data Theft, & the Rise of AI Fails

From "gainfully employed robots" to AI that accidentally ruins lives, this week's conversation unpacks the real-world fallout of futuristic promises. Leo, JPT, Iain, and Richard tackle energy sources, social media effects, tech layoffs, and the algorithms quietly taking charge. Meta is planning sweeping layoffs as AI costs mount Meta Said to Push Back Launch of Avocado Model Social media addiction trial: the plaintiff, Meta, and YouTube make closing arguments; jurors begin deliberations Friday on liability for harm to children Trump administration will reportedly get $10 billion for brokering the TikTok deal Bluesky CEO Jay Graber will step aside Digg's open beta shuts down after just two months, blaming AI bot spam X says it suspended 800 million accounts in 2024 over spam and manipulation Fake AI Content About the Iran War Is All Over X Musk admits xAI 'not built right' — weeks after Tesla invested $2 billion Nvidia Is Planning to Launch an Open-Source AI Agent Platform Amazon Wins Court Order To Block Perplexity's AI Shopping Bots Social Security watchdog investigating claims that DOGE engineer copied its databases DOGE Deposition Videos Taken Down After Judge Order and Widespread Mockery U.S. State Bans on Lab-Grown Meats Challenged in Court Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them EcoFlow brings its plug-in solar power plant to US homes (related to the plug-in solar story) TerraPower gets permit to build reactor Ex-Uber CEO Kalanick Debuts Plan for 'Gainfully Employed Robots' Tennessee grandmother jailed after AI facial recognition error links her to fraud Justice Department and Live Nation Reach Settlement Terms in Antitrust Case Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power Palantir's lethal AI weaponry deployed to find chairs for US government staff How Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the world 'Flying Cars' Will Take Off in American Skies This Sum

TWiT 1074: Chicken Mating Harnesses - Supreme Court Rules AI Art Not Copyrightable

Between copyright-free AI art, government blacklists, and data brokers run amok, this episode spotlights the fierce new battles for privacy, agency, and control in our digital lives. Plus, hear Cory Doctorow break down why the AI gold rush may be headed for a colossal crash. Pentagon Officially Tells Anthropic It Is a Supply Chain Risk Trump moves to blacklist Anthropic AI from all government work If AI is a weapon, why don't we regulate it like one? Sam Altman's greed and dishonesty are finally catching up to him ChatGPT user base surges 350% in 18 months as it nears 1 billion weekly active users AI-generated art can't be copyrighted after the Supreme Court declines to review the rule Chardet dispute shows how AI will kill software licensing, argues Bruce Perens Grammarly is using our identities without permission Alphabet Grants Sundar Pichai Stock Awards Worth Up to $686 Million Google vs Epic Games ends with Android app stores, lower fees Google Ends Its 30% App Store Fee, Welcomes Third-Party App Stores - Slashdot Xbox CEO confirms next-gen 'Project Helix' console will play PC games Motorola Partners With GrapheneOS - Slashdot Data Broker Breaches Fueled Nearly $21 Billion in Identity-Theft Losses CBP Tapped Into the Online Advertising Ecosystem To Track Peoples' Movements Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous 'Stop Cop City' Protester COPPA 2.0 passes the Senate again, unanimously this time South Korean Police Lose Seized Crypto By Posting Password Online Iranian drone strikes at Amazon sites raise alarms over protecting data centers Charter Gets FCC Permission To Buy Cox, Become Largest ISP In the US How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents Anne Wojcicki's Plan to Revive 23andMe: Rich Donors, Improved Tests—and Maybe Even MAHA Bundle of human neurons hooked to silicon learns to stumble through Doom 10% of Firefox crashes are caused by bitflips Seagate Just Unleashed 44TB Hard Drives Host: Leo Laporte

TWiT 1073: Broetry in Motion - Anthropic Stands Up to The Pentagon

Anthropic's clash with the Pentagon pits tech ethics against government demands, raising explosive questions about AI's role in surveillance and weaponry. If you care about who controls the future of artificial intelligence, this episode is a must-listen. Sam Altman says OpenAI shares Anthropic's red lines in Pentagon fight The whole thing was a scam OpenAI allows NSA to use GPT for surveilling Americans Anthropic's Claude hits No. 1 on Apple's top free apps list after Pentagon rejection Layoffs at Block Crypto exchange Gemini plans to lay off up to 200 staff, exit Europe, and Australia Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros., Paving Way for Paramount Takeover An update on our model deprecation commitments for Claude Opus 3 \ Anthropic Keep Android Open Colorado moves age checks from websites to operating systems | Biometric Update Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age verification New Apple product launch starts Monday, Tim Cook confirms Everything announced at Samsung Unpacked: The Galaxy S26 Ultra, Galaxy Buds 4 and more Here's how the new Samsung Galaxy S26 compares with last year's S25 Hacked Prayer App Sends 'Surrender' Messages to Iranians Amid Israeli and US Strikes The Big One: The cyberattack scenarios that keep officials up at night CISA replaces acting director after a bumbling year on the job New AirSnitch attack bypasses Wi-Fi encryption in homes, offices, and enterprises Victory! Tenth Circuit Finds Fourth Amendment Doesn't Support Broad Search of Protesters' Devices and Digital Data Enthusiasts used their home computers to search for ET—scientists are homing in on 100 signals they found Americans now listen to podcasts more often than talk radio, study shows | TechCrunch Burger King Will Use AI To Check If Employees Say 'Please' and 'Thank You' Uber Previews Its Dubai Air Taxi Service - Slashdot Rob Grant, creator of Red Dwarf, has died Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, Song of Kali, dead at 77

TWiT 1072: The Devil's Advocate - Jailbreaking Fighter Jets, Social Media Addiction, and Self-Driving Snafus

What do jailbreaking fighter jets, lost Amazon vans, and swapping your phone's smart features for a handful of mud have in common? TWiT dives into the wild, occasionally absurd future of tech, where yesterday's sci-fi is tomorrow's supply-chain headache. Mark Zuckerberg and his Ray-Ban entourage have their day in court Instagram Boss Says 16 Hours of Daily Use Is Not Addiction Meta Begins $65 Million Election Push To Advance AI Agenda - Slashdot Australia's Social Media Ban Is Isolating Kids With Disabilities—Just Like Critics Warned Google I/O 2026 set for May 19-20 Pixel 10A hands-on: More like a slightly better Pixel 9A than a slightly worse Pixel 10 Google announces Gemini 3.1 Pro, says it's better at complex problem-solving Tucson Daily Brief Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand 'Search Party' Surveillance Beyond Dogs A $10K+ bounty is waiting for anyone who can unplug Ring doorbells from Amazon’s cloud Amazon delivery van accidentally gets stuck in the sea in Britain Tesla 'Robotaxi' adds 5 more crashes in Austin in a month – 4x worse than humans Government Docs Reveal New Details About Tesla and Waymo Robotaxis' Human Babysitters The Supreme Court's Tariff Ruling Won't Bring Car Prices Back to Earth A flood of cheap used EVs is coming Signal guide for everyday folks PayPal discloses data breach that exposed user info for 6 months Federal ban on TP-Link routers shelved, but Texas fights on You probably can't trust your password manager if it's compromised Mississippi health system shuts down clinics statewide after ransomware attack Fake Job Recruiters Hid Malware In Developer Coding Challenges F-35 Software Could Be Jailbreaked Like an IPhone: Dutch Defense Minister - Slashdot In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud — 'The mud should sound perfectly awful, but it doesn't,' notes the experiment creator | Tom's Hardware Lab-Grown Meat Exist

TWiT 1071: Image Pickles - Are Social Platforms Addictive or Just Too Good?

Is social media addictive by design or just irresistible entertainment? The panel tackles the lawsuit that's dragging tech giants onto the witness stand and how surveillance tech is quietly expanding while lawmakers and users scramble to catch up. Jury told that Meta, Google 'engineered addiction' at landmark US trial Instagram Chief Says Social Media Is Not 'Clinically Addictive' in Landmark Trial Section 230 turns 30 as it faces its biggest tests yet Meta apparently thinks we're too distracted to care about facial recognition and Ray-Bans Amazon Ring's Super Bowl ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash TikTok is tracking you, even if you don't use the app. Discord backtracks on controversial age verification rollout...kind of Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass The DJI Romo robovac had security so poor that this man remotely accessed thousands of them HP's laptop subscriptions are a great deal — for HP FTC Ratchets Up Microsoft Probe, Queries Rivals on Cloud, AI T-Mobile announces its network is now full of AI by rolling out real-time translation Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags SpaceX Prioritizes Lunar 'Self-Growing City' Over Mars Project, Musk Says Elon Musk declares victory with Medicaid data release Waymo Is Getting DoorDashers to Close Doors on Self Driving Cars Backblaze Drive Stats for 2025 $1.8 million MST3K Kickstarter brings in (almost) everyone from the old show OpenAI Is Nuking Its 4o Model. China's ChatGPT Fans Aren't OK Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died Byte magazine artist Robert Tinney, who illustrated the birth of PCs, dies at 78 Launching The Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income Initiative Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Wesley Faulkner, Stacey Higginbotham, and Thomas Germain Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-F

TWiT 1070: A Yacht for Your Yacht - Super Bowl LX Gets a Surge of AI Ads!

Will Elon Musk really launch a million data centers into orbit, and why is McDonald's so worried about you using "McNuggets" as your password? This week's tech roundtable takes on wild new frontiers and everyday security headaches with insight and a bit of irreverence. More schools are banning phones so students can focus. Ohio's results show it's not that simple After Australia, Which Countries Could Be Next to Ban Social Media for Children EU says TikTok must disable 'addictive' features like infinite scroll, fix its recommendation engine Anthropic and OpenAI release dueling AI models on the same day in an escalating rivalry Sam Altman says Anthropic's Super Bowl spot is 'dishonest' about ChatGPT ads, but he agrees it's funny Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 uncovers 500 zero-day flaws in open-source code Alphabet reports Q4 2025 revenue of $113.8 billion Amazon's blowout $200 billion AI spending plan stuns Wall Street A New Gilded Age: Big Tech goes on a $600 billion AI spending splurge Hidden Cameras in Chinese Hotels Are Livestreaming Guests To Thousands of Telegram Subscribers AI-generated ads hit the Super Bowl SpaceX acquires xAI, plans to launch a massive satellite constellation to power it Russia suspected of intercepting EU satellites Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors New York Wants to Ctrl+Alt+Delete Your 3D Printer Western Digital Plots a Path To 140 TB Hard Drives Using Vertical Lasers and 14-Platter Designs A Crisis comes to Wordle: Reusing old words The Wayback Machine debuts a new plug-in designed to fix the internet's broken links problem Project Hail Mary is getting its own LEGO set Dave Farber Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Larry Magid, Mike Elgan, and Louis Maresca Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/

TWiT 1069: In My Head I Have 3 Buckets - Moltbook Becomes a Surreal AI Agent Social Network

What happens when AI bots get their own social network, Silicon Valley execs cozy up to power, and Apple takes a cut from creators? This week's panel calls out the bold, bizarre, and often problematic ways tech's biggest players are reshaping everything from AI assistants to your everyday privacy. There's a social network for AI agents, and it's getting weird Moltbook is the most interesting place on the internet right now Exposed Moltbook Database Let Anyone Take Control of Any AI Agent on the Site Pentagon clashes with Anthropic over military AI use, sources say Salesforce signs $5.6B deal to inject agentic AI into the US Army Angry Norfolk residents lose lawsuit to stop Flock license plate scanners SpaceX wants to put 1 million solar-powered data centers into orbit Elon Musk reportedly wants a June SpaceX IPO to align with his birthday, the planets Tesla hits a grim milestone: its second straight year of decline Tesla says production-ready Optimus robot is coming soon Microsoft reports strong cloud earnings in Q2 as gaming declines What We Learned From Meta, Microsoft and Tesla Apple tells Patreon to move creators to in-app purchase for subscriptions by November Apple CEO Tim Cook 'heartbroken' after repeated ICE killings in Minneapolis A rival smart glasses company is suing Meta over its Ray-Ban products TikTok, YouTube, and Meta are headed to court for a landmark trial over social media addiction The 'Social Media Addiction' Narrative May Be More Harmful Than Social Media Itself TikTok users freak out over app's 'immigration status' collection — here's what it means A Waymo hit a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign Samsung's TriFold phone will cost $2,899 in the US Groundhogs are bad at predicting weather, but they're valuable animal engineers\ Satellites encased in wood are in the works Belkin reminds users that its Wemo smart home products are shutting do